Voice acting advice

For collaboration between the different artists creating music and sound for vegastrike.
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Turbo
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Voice acting advice

Post by Turbo »

Hey team!

One of our new voice actors PM'ed me with some questions, but I think it is appropriate to make this thread where we can all talk about it. The tutorial I wrote here
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/us/don/t ... torial.htm
attempts to describe the "science" of voice acting, as does the Voice Acting Wiki here
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/media ... ice_Acting
but these questions are more about the "art," so we should discuss it.
Do you need to change the tone a whole lot for the different moods of the transmission? Does the voice type need to be constant for all transmissions of a particular faction? Do you change your voice completely for different factions? How can I hear the recordings other people have done?
Note that this is my advice after only a few years of voice acting for only 3 different open-source games, so I don't have all the answers.

When you read the <faction_name>.xml file, you can see the circumstances of the event that causes them to say whatever they say, such as "hit while happy" or "in combat and losing." So you should put whatever amount of emotion works for you and fits the faction. For example, my unadorned voice carried less emotion than my hunter voice, and the translator voice was that of a machine so it was the least emotional.

Ideally, you want to record all the lines for the faction in one session. You can come back later and do another set, then pick the one you like best. The goal is consistency, particularly if you are doing something other than your normal voice. And the best way to do that is to run through the entire set in one recording session. If you make a mistake, keep the recorder running and do it again, because you can edit the mistake out later. You might do it 3 times, or 9 times, or whatever, until you get the result you want but, disk space permitting, keep the ones that sound good until you get "the one."

To hear others' voice work, download the SVN version of the game and play it.

Note: as of Jan 2011, SVN for Windows is not working -- something to do with shaders. If you can run 0.5 as a separate install, you can get the voices into the game by copying the contents (including subfolders) of these folders from SVN to VS 0.5:
/data/communications
/data/sounds/missions


The Voice Acting Wiki lists the voices that are in-game already, along with those that need to be done. Also, I just created an FTP site at
http://www.willadsenfamily.org/VSvoice
where actors can upload their files, and moved my VS voice work into it. The site has a 100 MB quota which should last for a while. Once a voice is in the SVN game, we can take it off the FTP site. With plenty of room available, there is no harm in leaving my older work there for now.

My final thought for now is this: every faction does not have to sound completely different from every other faction. Even if we get different people's voices in the game, without gimmicks or accents, we still get the variety we need. So we need more actors! CLoneWolf has done 6 factions already, I did 5 (though Rivalin has promised to re-record the Highborn faction which would bring me down to 4), Fendorin did 1, and my wife did 1. By my count (and the wiki may be out of date in this regard) we still have a few alien races and a few human factions that need to be recorded, not to mention news stories.
Last edited by Turbo on Fri Feb 18, 2011 4:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Turbo

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MC707
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Re: Voice acting advice

Post by MC707 »

Turbo wrote:By my count (and the wiki may be out of date in this regard) we still have a few alien races and a few human factions that need to be recorded, not to mention news stories.
And not to mention phone calls and commercials :P and others I do not remember :oops:
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CLoneWolf
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Re: Voice acting advice

Post by CLoneWolf »

Well yes, to be precise, I've done 4 recordings that cover 7 factions, as for 3 of those 4 there's no difference between military and citizen factions (Andolians actually have a separate xml, andoliantoprivateer, which is seemingly unused, I had recorded those lines too just in case).
In case you're still interested in hearing them before getting the whole current SVN (which is well worth the big download though, IMHO), here are some direct links:

http://olografix.org/groucho/vs/merchant.zip
http://olografix.org/groucho/vs/mechanistv2.zip
http://olografix.org/groucho/vs/lihw.zip
http://olografix.org/groucho/vs/andolian.zip

I was totally new to voice acting, and Turbo's pieces of advice have been very helpful to me.
Psycodeine
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Re: Voice acting advice

Post by Psycodeine »

I like your tutorial, but I think there might be a chance for more depth. EX. Audacity doesn't have a vocoder which might be useful for some factions. I just use FL Studio's (the cheaper DAW, but most useful one) Vocoder plugin which is REALLY useful to make sounds. I just design a synth in sytrus with some kind of vocal register, run it through the vocoder on one note, and record. It sounds good when I'm done. Also, I can EQ the vocals so there is no crackling or popping which is really useful. My microphone was $10 at the local computer store, but I think I can get a cheap condenser mic for around $30-$50. I'll take a look at the wiki and see what we need. At least my advice would be...

1. Buy a condenser mic.
2. Get Audacity
3. Record.
4. Process.
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MC707
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Re: Voice acting advice

Post by MC707 »

Nice, I didn't know FL Studio had a good vocoder plugin. I will try with my other DAW once I format this box once and for all (hopefully soon -_-), since I got a little vocoder plugin from TPB :twisted:
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Turbo
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Re: Voice acting advice

Post by Turbo »

Psycodeine wrote:I like your tutorial, but I think there might be a chance for more depth. EX. Audacity doesn't have a vocoder which might be useful for some factions.
Thanks. My tutorial was originally written for the Thief fan mission community so we didn't do much with effects.

The beta version of Audacity has a vocoder, but as I mentioned in one of the alien-voice threads, it's makes the speech hard to understand. I'd like to hear a sample of the FL Studio, maybe we can use it to replace my voice as the translator.
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There are two speeds in combat: stopped, and as fast as you can go. Unless you run into something, going fast keeps you alive more often than stopping.
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